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Topic: Water (04/26/04)
TITLE: Was the writer of Genesis British? By Robert Allwright 04/27/04 |
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The first mention of rain in the Bible is typically British; it is because it hasn’t yet happened! In Genesis 2:5 it mentions that the plants were sustained even though there is a lack of rain. This is hard for us to get our heads around; it is something so different to our experience. Rather than the heavy downpour that we expect God waters the earth through using a mist from the ground. This process still happens to a lesser degree when you go out into the countryside in the mornings often around the valleys with rivers; you see a low-lying mist that moistens the ground totally. Not only is it practical, but also beautiful to behold when the first rays of sunlight come over the hills to begin to burn off the vapour.
God has made us as people, spiritually self sustaining. We, as believers, do not need a priest to keep us holy any longer. In fact we are a holy priesthood, in and of ourselves. We have direct access to God, and he promises to be faithful and just to forgive when requested. He sends His spirit upon the righteous and waters the soil of our soul. Not aggressively like the hard rains, but softly like the gentle mist.
The concept of rain is next discussed as a punishment. We all know the story of Noah’s ark with the building and the preaching fruitlessly for nearly one hundred years, except for the righteousness of his wife, sons and daughters-in-law. It is very typical of us (and I speak as a Brit) to complain when it rains and see it as a punishment. When it rains some years more than it should we look for someone to blame. The fact that often our towns and villages get flooded is actually our fault. Now I am not saying that anyone deserves to be flooded in the way that God made the judgement call. However part of the reason there is so much flooding in the UK is greed and progress. I am not an environmentalist, but even I can see that building roads and making larger fields is going to have an effect on the environment! Basically we tear down the hedges to make bigger fields, hedges that in the past have stopped or at least slowed the run off of water from our farmland. However often the water has to get through one hedge, and then out onto a road into the valley, which it flows down, and most roads lead to the towns or villages, which then get flooded.
Like some villages in England, our minds are getting flooded. Not with water, but with sin and evil. While we sometimes refuse it, and try to deny it our moral drains get clogged, and we get over run. In society and in our individual lives we have removed the hedges that used to stop the flow. The things we see in the media, the language that our kids use and the way of urban life has eroded the barriers we used to have as a society mind set. As Christians there is a big challenge in the Bible to only think about what is pure, right, noble and noteworthy, a challenge we all fail at miserably. What you watch, read and listen to affects your mind. Keeping your mental barriers up requires constant maintenance, but will ensure you don’t get flooded.